Message from the ICRE Director

Wishwa Kapoor, MD, MPH

Director, Institute for Clinical Research Education

With the successful renewal of the Clinical and Translational Science Award to the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, this is an exciting time at the ICRE. We are in the early stages of implementing the programs applauded by the National Institutes of Health in our renewal proposal, and we look forward to promoting the careers of an even wider section of the biomedical and behavioral research investigators in Pittsburgh.

In recent years, we have led a number of new initiatives and have achieved many successes that are of importance at both the institutional and national levels:

• For the past 3 years, we have served more than 370 students and trainees from across the University.
• We received funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to establish the Comparative Effectiveness Research Track within the MS program and have proposed a program leading to a certificate in comparative effectiveness research.
• We have been involved in leading the national discussion to shape PhD programs in clinical and translational science.
• We have established competencies for clinical and translational science training and are implementing competency-based education.
• We have graduated our first PhD trainees in clinical and translational science.
• We have participated in a national randomized control trial for the training of mentors.

We strive for excellence in our educational and training programs. Toward this end, we continue to introduce innovative pedagogical methods that engage our students and facilitate active learning across our courses. We are concerned with maintaining and training the pipeline of translational researchers and are focusing particularly on training early-career researchers in the art of mentoring. In this economically difficult period, we are also focusing efforts to help faculty receive career development grants. These grants enable early-career researchers to establish themselves as independent researchers in the fields involved in clinical and translational science, and they allow mid-career researchers to pursue their investigative studies while mentoring their junior colleagues.

I am grateful to Dr. Doris Rubio, co-director of the ICRE, and all the core faculty members who created the ICRE programs and who continue to provide outstanding teaching in and leadership of these programs. I am also grateful to Dr. Arthur Levine, whose unconditional and enthusiastic support of the ICRE has contributed substantially to the ICRE’s success.

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